


No Soft Lights to Enchant Me

by clunion68



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: CAN YOU BELIEVE, Dorks in Love, F/M, Fire Lady Katara, Fluff, Late at Night, Married Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Married Life, POV Katara (Avatar), Romantic Fluff, Slice of Life, So Married, Tenderness, and so is katara, call a dentist when you're done, enjoy the fluff y'all, it's too tender, just.... unbelievably soft, katara in love, like wow even the fire lord and fire lady are human at the end of the day, only if you're very brave, seriously, sigh, these tags are a mess, whatever you do don't put on ella fitzgerald or chet baker on softly in the background while reading, zuko is so soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25816966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clunion68/pseuds/clunion68
Summary: "I need no soft lights to enchant meIf you will only grant meThe right to hold you ever so tightAnd to feel in the nightThe nearness of you"_______________________________________________________You know that feeling when you've just hosted a huge party, or come home from one? And you're exhausted, completely worn out, but it's not bad? Actually, it's pretty good! And getting ready for bed and going to sleep is just? The best feeling? Anyway, here's a slice of life, a slice of Katara and Zuko just being, at the end of the day, very... normal human people. (As much as they can be)
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 96





	No Soft Lights to Enchant Me

**Author's Note:**

> *pairs well with Ella Fitzgerald

“Never say your wife’s not funny,” she dragged a damp rag cross her eyelid, pulled the makeup with it, “not that I have to tell you how hard it is to get diplomats to laugh. Shit, even my brother laughed, and you know it takes a lot for him to admit that he’s not the only – Anyway.”

_All that was on my face? This still surprises me? Every banquet? Every gala? After how long?_

“Anyway,” she chucked the rag onto the vanity table and her voice into the bedroom, “your wife is very funny, very funny.”

She looked in the mirror.

_Ugh. Still half a face to remove._

“Hilarious.”

_A clown._

There was maybe a grunt or maybe silence from the other room.

“The next one of these ridiculous things we host, I’m not wearing makeup. I’m just not.”

The Lady needs a full face of makeup for the party. The Lady needs a full face of makeup to be presentable. The Lady needs a full face of makeup to accentuate her best features, so all the guests can see what a truly lovely face The Lady has. And the Lady also needs a full face of makeup to drag her children, drunk on exhaustion and overstimulation, to bed. The Lady needs a full face of makeup to wrestle with tiny limbs and drooping eyes, and because politics do not have a bedtime apparently, cries for revolution, ALL HAIL THE MELON LORD (she would write Toph, pardon, The Right Honorable Melon Lord, a strongly worded letter for that, unless she happened to catch her in person). The Lady needed a full face of makeup to wriggle the boots off the only child who had, by the mercy of the universe, actually fallen asleep, albeit still dressed fully in her state-sanctioned finest. The Lady needed a full face of makeup to count down from 3… 2… 1… you had better be in bed by ‘one’ or there will be no bedtime story from Dad, is that clear? The Lady needed a full face of makeup to finally come back to her room and take off her full face of makeup.

Her husband did not.

“You,” her voice reverberated as her eyelid stretched into last week, “don’t have to. So why do _I_? Ridiculous.”

She gave herself a well-earned splash to the face and doused the flames surrounding her mirror. She slipped off her formal robes – well, as much as one could actually slip off layers of collars and sashes and skirts and sleeves – and slipped a big, loose, wonderfully informal sleeping gown on.

“You know what, next one of these things, it’s your turn. We’ll put a thousand pins in your hair, line your eyes, what for the shadow, what do you think… I think a very dark blue might be nice, but you know, I know you’re partial to red so. Either way I think you’d look gr –“

When the Fire Lord stares off into space, when he narrows his eyes, or blinks slowly, everyone makes the safe and logical assumption that he is merely lost in contemplation of great wisdom. His mind always chipping away at some issue of philosophy or ethics or the state of the nations, the state of the world. Katara knows it’s Zuko on the verge of passing out. So, occasionally, the Fire Lady must, as her duty to the people, kick the Fire Lord ever so subtly under the table.

But no one sees the Fire Lord fall asleep, like a child, his own child even, with his clothes still on, with his boots still on, with -

_Oh he really was tired!_

\- his crown still wedged neatly into a slowly sagging topknot. They all see the Fire Lord in his exquisite regalia sweeping through the room, but no one sees it exquisitely melting off the side of his exquisite royal bed pooling on the exquisite royal floor of his exquisite royal chambers. Or his head sunk back. Or his throat made long. Or his mouth fallen open – royal snores escaping. Or his arm slung out. Ankles crossed and feet sticking up. That pleasure was all hers.

The ceilings really had been that high, the bedposts too. Their room had really always been this large. More space for the moonlight to fill. Had he ever looked so small?

She crept gently, sat on the bed, stared at his boots. Thought about trying to pry them off his feet without accidentally dislocating his joints. Thought about lifting his head with one hand and with the other trying to somehow remove the armor placed on his shoulders and trapped between the mattress and his back. She would just have to move slowly and try very hard to curse only under her breath.

_Alright, your highness. Let’s get these bulky things off of you._

See, if she had another pair of hands this would be easy. She let hers just hover over him. Something had melted in the firelight, call it weariness. Something had come over him in the moonlight, call it calm. She was about to peel him like an onion, but if she woke him, and she knew despite her best efforts she would probably wake him, something would break. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t be snoring again in minutes, seconds even. It was just that he –

_He’s a grown man. He can deal with it in the morning._

There was one thing she could easily remove. She got up and plucked the crown from his topknot. Painless. The only things that shifted were a few hairs on his forehead. It was always a little heavier than she expected. Not that she held his often, much less wore it, ever. Not that her own was a paper flower, per se. They were just things. Her mind weighed them one way, her hands another. Just a thing.

_There_.

In the morning he would open his eyes, scratch out the crust, peer down at his choice - or lack thereof - in sleepwear without moving a muscle, furrow his brow, draw his hand up to the top of his head, widen his eyes, bolt forward, throw his head around, and collapse back onto his pillow with a scowl of relief, one hand on his forehead, one clamping down on the crown at his bedside. She knew.

“Did I…” he would ask, “put that there?”

The lamplight could flicker for another second as she drew her hand over her husband’s face, barely touching it, watching the soft light roll like the tide, follow the nearly imperceptible rise and fall of his chest. The lamplight could flicker for another second as memories drifted by like stray clouds across the moon.

_Where did you learn to dance?_

_Where did you?_

_He has your eyes._

_My son is a prodigy!_

_Your husband is soaking wet…_

_Congratulations, a little princess!_

_Look, look, show Mommy what you just showed me!_

_Twins?!_

_Wait… twins?_

_I think I’m the one who should be thanking you._

The lamplight could flicker for another second, but he had always looked better in the moonlight. At least to her. She was biased, what could she say? The moonlight did to him in an instant what the sea would do to a stone over hundreds upon hundreds of years. His forehead was warm when she kissed it, always was.

Sometimes it was hard to come back to themselves. Sometimes the days were lost in the dress and the rituals and the protocols and the worry over the children and their worry over the country and the worry over the world. Sometimes fixing the world felt like trying to build a castle with dry sand. But that was tomorrow’s problem. Tonight, her children were all in bed, her husband was in bed, and she was in bed, tucking herself under his arm, letting his sleeve blanket her, resting her head on his chest and listening to his funny little snores rippling through an otherwise pin-drop night. Tonight, underneath the pale moon and palace roof, underneath the armors and silks, in a life that occasionally felt more like a story and less like her own, he was just a man and she was just a woman who loved him very much. And it was good, actually, truly, really good. He was near, and it was good. So near she was feeling the steady push and pull of his lungs. Like being rocked to sleep on a boat. Like being home.

**Author's Note:**

> Ha ha anyway, that made me feel a lot of things, I hope you felt a lot of things that maybe I was feeling. We can all feel together, ah the power of storytelling. 
> 
> Listened to The Nearness of You on REPEAT for this fic (mainly the Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong recording because - sorry Sinatra - it actually is the best version, who's surprised!). Hopefully captured the tenderness of that song here. 
> 
> As always, thanks to my friends for basically being my writers' room at this point lmao 
> 
> And, of course, as always, thanks to you for reading!


End file.
